This Simian World

Josephine f. fiergmann

ALSO BY

CLARENCE DAY

THE CROW’S NEST
THOUGHTS WITHOUT WORDS
GOD AND MY FATHER
IN THE GREEN MOUNTAIN COUNTRY
SCENES FROM THE MESOZOIC

LIFE WITH FATHER

THIS SIMIAN WORLD

THIS SIMIAN

WORLD

h

CLARENCE DAY

With Illustrations by the Author

New York London

ALFREDA-KNOPF

1936

COPYRIGHT 1920, BY CLARENCE DAY

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro¬
duced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief
passages in a rei'iew to be printed in a magazine or

newspaper.

Published May 22, 1920
Reprinted Nine Times
Eleventh Printing. March, 1936

Manufactured in the United States of America

“How I hate the man who talks about the
‘brute creation,’ with an ugly emphasis on
brute. ... As for me, I am proud of my close
kinship with other animals. I take a jealous
pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think
that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow liv¬
ing in the trees, and that my frame has come
down through geological time via sea jelly and
worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and
Apes. Who would exchange these for the pal¬
lid couple in the Garden of Eden?”

W. N. P. Barbellion.

THIS SIMIAN WORLD

ONE

Last Sunday, Potter took me out driving along
upper Broadway, where those long rows of tall
new apartment houses were built a few years
ago. It was a mild afternoon and great crowds
of people were out. Sunday afternoon crowds.
They were not going anywhere,—they were just
strolling up and down, staring at each other, and
talking. There were thousands and thousands
of them.

“Awful, aren’t they!” said Potter.

I didn’t know what he meant. When he added,
“Why, these crowds,” I turned and asked, “Why,
what about them?” I wasn’t sure whether he had
an idea or a headache.

“Other creatures don’t do it,” he replied, with
a discouraged expression. “Are any other beings

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This Simian World

ever found in such masses, but vermin? Aimless,
staring, vacant-minded,—look at them! I can get
no sense whatever of individual worth, or of
value in men as a race, when I see them like this.
It makes one almost despair of civilization.”

I thought this over for awhile, to get in touch
with his attitude. I myself feel differently at
different times about us human-beings: some¬
times I get pretty indignant when we are at¬
tacked (for there is altogether too much abuse
of us by spectator philosophers) and yet at other
times I too feel like a spectator, an alien: but
even then I had never felt so alien or despairing
as Potter. I cast about for the probable cause of
our difference. “Let’s remember,” I said, “it’s a
simian civilization/’

Potter was staring disgustedly at some vaude¬
ville sign-boards.

“Yes,” I said, “those for example are distinc¬
tively simian. Why should you feel disappoint¬
ment at something inevitable?” And I went on
to argue that it wasn’t as though we were de¬
scended from eagles for instance, instead of
(broadly speaking) from ape-like or monkeyish

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This Simian World

beings. Being of simian stock, we had simian
traits. Our development naturally bore the
marks of our origin. If we had inherited our
dispositions from eagles we should have loathed
vaudeville. But as cousins of the Bandarlog, we
loved it. What could you expect?

TWO

If we had been made directly from clay, the
way it says in the Bible, and had therefore in¬
herited no intermediate characteristics,—if a god,
or some principle of growth, had gone that way
to work with us, he or it might have molded us
into much more splendid forms.

But considering our simian descent, it has
done very well. The only people who are dis¬
appointed in us are those who still believe that
clay story. Or who—unconsciously—still let it
color their thinking.

There certainly seems to be a power at work
in the world, by virtue of which every living
thing grows and develops. And it tends toward
splendor. Seeds become trees, and weak little
nations grow great. But the push or the force
that is doing this, the yeast as it were, has to work
in and on certain definite kinds of material. Be-

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This Simian World

cause this yeast is in us, there may be great and
undreamedof possibilities awaiting mankind;
but because of our line of descent there are also
queer limitations.

- 7 -

THREE

In those distant invisible epochs before men
existed, before even the proud missing link
strutted around through the woods (little real¬
izing how we his greatgrandsons would smile
wryly at him, much as our own descendants may
shudder at us, ages hence) the various animals
were desperately competing for power. They
couldn't or didn't live as equals. Certain groups
sought the headship.

Many strange forgotten dynasties rose, met
defiance, and fell. In the end it was our an¬
cestors who won, and became simian kings, and

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This Simian World

bequeathed a whole planet to us—and have never
been thanked for it. No monument has been
raised to the memory of those first hairy con¬
querors; yet had they not fought well and wisely
in those far-off times, some other race would
have been masters, and kept us in cages, or shot
us for sport in the forests while they ruled the
world.

So Potter and I, developing this train of
thought, began to imagine we had lived many
ages ago, and somehow or other had alighted
here from some older planet. Familiar with the
ways of evolution elsewhere in the universe, we
naturally should have wondered what course it
would take on this earth. “Even in this out-of-
the-way corner of the Cosmos,” we might have
reflected, “and on this tiny star, it may be of
interest to consider the trend of events.” We
should have tried to appraise the different species
as they wandered around, each with its own set
of good and bad characteristics. Which group,
we d have wondered, would ever contrive to

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This Simian World

rule all the rest?

And how great a development could they
tain to thereafter?

FOUR

If we had landed here after the great saurians
had been swept from the scene, we might first
have considered the lemurs or apes. They had
hands. Aesthetically viewed, the poor simians
were simply grotesque; but travelers who knew
other planets might have known what beauty
may spring from an uncouth beginning in this
magic universe.

Still—those frowzy, unlovely hordes of apes
and monkeys were so completely lacking in signs
of kingship; they were so flighty, too, in their
ways, and had so little purpose, and so much love
for absurd and idle chatter, that they would
have struck us, we thought, as unlikely material.
Such traits, we should have reminded ourselves,
persist. They are not easily left behind, even
after long stages; and they form a terrible ob¬
stacle to all high advancement.

— ii —

FI V E

The bees or the ants might have seemed to
us more promising. Their smallness of size was
not necessarily too much of a handicap. They
could have made poison their weapon for the
subjugation of rivals. And in these orderly insects
there was obviously a capacity for labor, and
co-operative labor at that, which could carry
them far. We all know that they have a marked
genius: great gifts of their own. In a civilization
of super-ants or bees, there would have been no
problem of the hungry unemployed, no poverty,
no unstable government, no riots, no strikes for
short hours, no derision of eugenics, no thieves,
perhaps no crime at all.

Ants are good citizens: they place group in¬
terests first.

But they carry it so far, they have few or no
political rights. An ant doesn’t have the vote,
apparently: he just has his duties.

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This Simian World

This quality may have something to do with
their having group wars. The egotism of their
individual spirits is allowed scant expression, so
the egotism of the group is extremely ferocious
and active. Is this one of the reasons why ants
fight so much? They go in for State Socialism,
yes, but they are not internationalists. And ants
commit atrocities in and after their battles that
are—I wish I could truly say—inhuman.

But conversely, ants are absolutely unselfish
within the community. They are skilful. In¬
genious. Their nests and buildings are relatively
larger than man’s. The scientists speak of their
paved streets, vaulted halls, their hundreds of
different domesticated animals, their pluck and
intelligence, their individual initiative, their
chaste and industrious lives. Darwin said the
ant’s brain was “one of the most marvelous atoms
in the world, perhaps more so than the brain
of man' —yes, of present-day man, who for thou¬
sands and thousands of years has had so much
more chance to develop his brain. ... A
thoughtful observer would have weighed all
these excellent qualities.

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This Simian World

When we think of these creatures as little men
(which is all wrong of course) we see they have
their faults. To our eyes they seem too orderly,
for instance. Repressively so. Their ways are
more fixed than those of the old Egyptians, and
their industry is painful to think of, it s hyper-
Chinese. But we must remember this is a simian
comment. The instincts of the species that you
and I belong to are of an opposite kind; and that
makes it hard for us to judge ants fairly.

But we and the ants are alike in one matter:
the strong love of property. And instead of
merely struggling with Nature foi it they also
fight other ants. The custom of plunder seems
to be a part of most of their wars. This has gone
on for ages among them, and continues today.
Raids, ferocious combats, and loot are part of
an ant’s regular life. Ant reformers, if there were
any, might lay this to their property sense, and
talk of abolishing property as a cure for the evil.
But that would not help for long unless they
could abolish the love of it.

Ants seem to care even more for property than
we do ourselves. We men are inclined to ease up

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This Simian World

a little when we have all we need. But it is not
so with ants: they can t bear to stop: they keep
right on working. This means that ants do not
contemplate: they heed nothing outside of their
own little rounds. It is almost as though theii
fondness for labor had closed fast their minds.

Conceivably they might have developed in¬
quiring minds. But this would have run against
their strongest instincts. The ant is knowing
and wise; but he doesn’t know enough to take a
vacation. The worshipper of energy is too physi¬
cally energetic to see that he cannot explore
certain higher fields until he is still.

Even if such a race had somehow achieved
self-consciousness and reason, would they have
been able therewith to rule their instincts, ox to
stop work long enough to examine themselves ;
or the universe, or to dream of any noble devel¬
opment? Probably not. Reason is seldom or
never the ruler: it is the servant of instinct. It
would therefore have told the ants that incessant
toil was useful and good.

“Toil has brought you up from the ruck ot
things,” Reason would have plausibly said. “It's

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This Simian World

by virtue of feverish toil that you have become
what you are. Being endlessly industrious is the
best road—for you—to the heights.’ And, self¬
reassured, they would then have had orgies of
work; and thus, by devoted exertion, have
blocked their advancement. Work, and order
and gain would have withered their souls.

SIX

Let us take the great cats. They are free from
this talent for slave-hood. Stately beasts like the
lion have more independence of mind than the
ants,—and a self-respect, we may note, unknown
to primates. Or consider the leopards, with hearts
that no tyrant could master. What fearless and
resolute leopard-men they could have fathered!
How magnificently such a civilization would
have made its force tell!

A race of civilized beings descended from these
great cats would have been rich in hermits and
solitary thinkers. The recluse would not have
been stigmatized as peculiar, as he is by us sim¬
ians. They would not have been a credulous
people, or easily religious. False prophets and
swindlers would have found few dupes. And
what generals they would have made! what con¬
summate politicians!

Don’t imagine them as a collection of tigers

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This Simian World

walking around on their hind-legs. They would
have only been like tigers in the sense that we
men are like monkeys. Their development in
appearance and character would have been quite
transforming.

Instead of the small flat head of the tiger, they
w T ould have had clear smooth brows; and those
who were not bald would have had neatly parted
hair—perhaps striped.

Their mouths would have been smaller and
more sensitive: their faces most dignified. Where
now they express chiefly savageness, they would
have expressed fire and grace.

They would have been courteous and suave.
No vulgar crowding would have occurred on the
streets of their cities. No mobs. No ignominious
subway-jams.

Imagine a cultivated coterie of such men and
women, at a ball, dancing. How few of us
humans are graceful. They would have all been
Pavlowas.

Like ants and bees, the cat race is nervous.
Their temperaments are high-strung. They

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This Simian World

would never have become as poised or as placid
as—say—super-cows. Yet they would have had
less insanity, probably, than we. Monkeys’ (and
elephants’) minds seem precariously balanced,
unstable. The great cats are saner. They are
intense, they would have needed sanitariums:
but fewer asylums. And their asylums would
have been not for weak-minded souls, but for
furies.

They would have been strong at slander. They
would have been far more violent than we, in
their hates, and they would have had fewer
friendships. Yet they might not have been any
poorer in real friendships than we. The real
friendships among men are so rare that when
they occur they are famous. Friends as loyal as
Damon and Pythias were, are exceptions. Good
fellowship is common, but unchanging affection
is not. We like those who like us, as a rule, and
dislike those who don’t. Most of our ties have
no better footing than that; and those who have
many such ties are called warm-hearted.

The super-cat-men would have rated cleanli-

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This Simian World

ness higher. Some of us primates have learned
to keep ourselves clean, but it’s no large pro¬
portion; and even the cleanest of us see no
grandeur in soap-manufacturing, and we don't
look to manicures and plumbers for social pres¬
tige. A feline race would have honored such
occupations. J. de Courcy Tiger would have

felt that nothing hut
making soap, or being
a plumber, was com¬
patible with a high
social position: and the
rich Vera Pantherbilt
would have deigned to
dine only with mani¬
cures.

None but the lowest
dregs of such a race
would have been law¬
yers spending their
span of life on this
mysterious earth study¬
ing the long dusty records of dead and gone
quarrels. We simians naturally admire a pro-

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This Simian World

fession full of wangle and chatter. But that is
a monkeyish way of deciding disputes, not a
feline.

We fight best in armies, gregariously, where
the risk is reduced; but we disapprove usually
of murderers, and of almost all private combat.
With the great cats, it would have been just the
other way round. (Lions and leopards fight
each other singly, not in bands, as do monkeys.)

As a matter of fact, few of us delight in really
serious fighting. We do love to bicker; and we
box and knock each other around, to exhibit
our strength; but few normal simians are keen
about bloodshed and killing; we do it in war
only because of patriotism, revenge, duty, glory.
A feline civilization would have cared nothing
for duty or glory, but they would have taken a
far higher pleasure in gore. If a planet of super-
cat-men could look down upon ours, they would
not know which to think was the most amazing:
the way we tamely live, five million or so in a
city, with only a few police to keep us quiet,
while we commit only one or two murders a
day, and hardly have a respectable number of

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This Simian World

brawLs; or the way great armies of us are trained
to fight,—not liking it much, and yet doing more
killing in war-time and shedding more blood
than even the fiercest lion on his cruelest days.
Which would perplex a gentlemanly super-cat
spectator the more, our habits of wholesale
slaughter in the field, or our spiritless making a
fetish of “order,” at home?

It is fair to judge peoples by the rights they
will sacrifice most for. Super-cat-men would have
been outraged, had their right of personal com¬
bat been questioned. The simian submits with
odd readiness to the loss of this privilege. What
outrages him is to make him stop wagging his
tongue. He becomes most excited and passionate
about the right of free speech, even going so far
in his emotion as to declare it is sacred.

He looks upon other creatures pityingly be¬
cause they are dumb. If one of his own children
is bom dumb, he counts it a tragedy. Even that
mere hesitation in speech, known as stammering,
he deems a misfortune.

So precious to a simian is the privilege of

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This Simian World

making sounds with his tongue, that when he
washes to punish severely those men he calls
criminals, he forbids them to chatter, and forces
them by threats to be silent. It is felt that this
punishment is entirely too cruel however, and
that even the w^orst offenders should be allowed
to talk part of each day.

Whatever a simian does, there must always
be some talking about it. He can’t even make
peace without a kind of chatter called a peace
conference. Super-cats would not have had to
“make” peace: they w r ould have just walked off
and stopped fighting.

In a w'orld of super-cat-men, I suppose there
would have been fewer sailors; and people would
have cared less for seaside resorts, or for swim¬
ming. Cats hate getting w r et, so men descended
from them might have hated it. They would
have felt that even going in wading was a sign
of great hardihood, and only the most daring
young fellows, showing off, w r ould have done it.

Among them there would have been no anti¬
vivisection societies:

t

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This Simian World

No Young Cats Christian Associations or Red
Cross work:

No vegetarians:

No early closing laws:

Much more hunting and trapping:

No riding to hounds; that’s pure simian. Just
think how it would have entranced the old-time
monkeys to foresee such a game! A game where
they’d all prance off on captured horses, tearing
pell-mell through the woods in gay red coats,
attended by yelping packs of servant-dogs. It is
excellent sport—but how cats would scorn to
hunt in that way!

They would not have knighted explorers—
they would have all been explorers.

Imagine that you are strolling through a super¬
cat city at night. Over yonder is the business
quarter, its evening shops blazing with jewels.
The great stock-yards lie to the east where you
hear those sad sounds: that low mooing as of
innumerable herds, waiting slaughter. Beyond
lie the silent aquariums and the crates of fresh
mice. (They raise mice instead of hens in the

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This Simian World

country, in Super-cat Land.) To the west is a
beautiful but weirdly bacchanalian park, with
long groves of catnip, where young super-cats
have their fling, and where a few crazed catnip
addicts live on till they die, unable to break off
their strangely undignified orgies. And here
where you stand is the sumptuous residence
district. Houses with spacious grounds every¬
where: no densely-packed buildings. The streets
have been swept up—
or lapped up—until
they are spotless. Not
a scrap of paper is ly¬
ing around anywhere:
no rubbish, no dust.

Few of the pavements
are left bare, as ours
are, and those few
are polished: the rest
have deep soft velvet
carpets. No footfalls
are heard.

There are no lights in these streets, though
these people are abroad much at night. All you

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This Simian World

see are stars overhead and the glowing eyes of
cat ladies, of lithe silken ladies who pass you,
or of stiff-whiskered men. Beware of those men
and the gleam of their split-pupiled stare. They
are haughty, punctilious, inflammable: self-
absorbed too, however. They will probably not
even notice you; but if they do, you are lost.
They take offense in a flash, abhor strangers,
despise hospitality, and would think nothing of
killing you or me on their way home to dinner.

Follow one of them. Enter this house. Ah
what splendor! No servants, though a few abject
monkeys wait at the back-doors, and submissively
run little errands. But of course they are never
let inside: they would seem out of place. Gor¬
geous couches, rich colors, silken walls, an
oriental magnificence. In here is the ballroom.
But wait: what is this in the comer? A large
triumphal statue—of a cat overcoming a dog.
And look at this dining-room, its exquisite ap¬
pointments, its daintiness: faucets for hot and
cold milk in the pantry, and a gold bowl of
cream.

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This Simian World

Some one is entering. Hush! If I could but
describe her! Languorous, slender and pas¬
sionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An in¬
dolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace.
If you were her lover, my boy, you would learn
how fierce love can be, how capricious and sud¬
den, how hostile, how ecstatic, how violent!

Think what the state of the arts would have
been in such cities.

They would have had few comedies on their
stage; no farces. Cats care little for fun. In the
circus, superlative acrobats. No clowns.

In drama and sing¬
ing they would have
surpassed us proba¬
bly. Even in the stage
of arrested develop¬
ment as mere animals,
in which we see cats,
they wail with a pas¬
sionate intensity at
night in our yards. Imagine how a Caruso

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This Simian World

descended from such beings would sing.

In literature they would not have begged for
happy endings.

They would have been personally more self-
assured than we, far freer of cheap imitativeness
of each other in manners and art, and hence
more original in art; more clearly aw r are of what
they really desired, not cringingly watchful of
what was expected of them: less widely observ¬
ant perhaps, more deeply thoughtful.

Their artists would have produced less how¬
ever, even though they felt more. A super-cat
artist would have valued the pictures he drew
for their effects on himself; he wouldn't have
cared a rap whether anyone else saw them or
not. He would not have bothered, usually, to
give any form to his conceptions. Simply to have
had the sensation would have for him been
enough. But since simians love to be noticed, it
does not content them to have a conception;
they must wrestle with it until it takes a form
in which others can see it. They doom the artistic
impulse to toil with its nose to the grindstone,
until their idea is expressed in a book or a statue.

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This Simian World

Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic im¬
pulse seems not to wish to produce finished work.
It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is
born; and if we go on, art is labor. With the
cats, art is joy.

But the dominant characteristic of this fine
race is cunning. And hence I think it would have
been through their craftiness, chiefly, that they
would have felt the impulse to study, and the
wish to advance. Craft is a cat’s delight: craft
they never can have too much of. So it w r ould
have been from one triumph of cunning to an¬
other that they would have marched. That
would have been the greatest driving force of
their civilization.

This would have meant great progress in in¬
vention and science—or in some fields of science,
the economic for instance. But it would have
retarded them in others. Craft studies the world
calculatingly, from without, instead of under¬
standing^ from within. Especially would it have
cheapened the feline philosophies; for not
simply how to know but how to circumvent the

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This Simian World

universe would have been their desire. Man¬
kind’s curiosity is disinterested; it seems purer
by contrast. That is to say, made as we are, it
seems purer to us. What w T e call disinterested,
however, super-cats might call aimless. (Aim¬
lessness is one of the regular simian traits.)

I don’t mean to be prejudiced in favor of the
simian side. Curiosity may be as debasing, I
grant you, as craft. And craft might turn into
artifices of a kind which would be noble and fine.
Just as the ignorant and fitful curiosity of some
little monkey is hardly to be compared to the
astronomer's magnificent search, so the craft
and cunning we see in our pussies would bear
small relation to the high-minded planning of
some ruler of the race we are imagining.

And yet—craft is self-defeating in the end.
Transmute it into its finest possible form, let
it be as subtle and civilized as you please, as
yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets
itself over against the wholeness of things; its
role is that of the part at war with the whole.
Milton’s Lucifer had the mind of a fine super-
cat.

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This Simian World

That craft may defeat itself in the end, how¬
ever, is not the real point. That doesn’t explain
why the lions aren’t ruling the planet. The
trouble is, it would defeat itself in the begin¬
ning. It would have too bitterly stressed the
struggle for existence. Conflict and struggle make
civilizations virile, but they do not by themselves
make civilizations. Mutual aid and support are
needed for that. There the felines are lacking.
They do not co-operate well; they have small
group-devotion. Their lordliness, their strong
self-regard, and their coolness of heart, have
somehow thwarted the chance of their racial
progress.

-31-

S E V E JV

There are many other beasts that one might once
have thought had a chance.

Some, like horses and deer, were not bold
enough; or were stupid, like buffaloes.

Some had over-trustful characters, like the
seals; or exploitable characters, like cows, and
chickens, and sheep. Such creatures sentence
themselves to be captives, by their lack of
ambition.

Dogs? They have more spirit. But they have
lost their chance of kingship through worship¬
ping us. The dog’s finer qualities can't be
praised too warmly; there is a purity about his
devotion which makes mere men feel speechless:
but with all love for dogs, one must grant they
are vassals, not rulers. They are too parasitic—
the one willing servant class of the world. And
we have betrayed them by making under-simians
of them. We have taught them some of our own

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This Simian World

ways of behaving, and frowned upon theirs. Lov¬
ing us, they let us stop their developing in tune
with their natures; and they’ve patiently tried
ever since to adopt ways of ours. They have done
it, too; but of course they can’t get far: it’s not
their own road. Dogs have more love than in¬
tegrity. They've been true to us, yes, but they
haven’t been true to themselves.

Pigs? The pig is remarkably intelligent and
brave.—but he’s gross; and grossness delays one’s
achievement, it takes so much time. The snake
too, though wise, has a way of eating himself
into stupors. If super-snake-men had had ban¬
quets they would have been too vast to describe.
Each little snake family could have eaten a herd
of cattle at Christmas.

Goats, then? Bears or turtles? Wolves, whales,
crows? Each had brains and pride, and would
have been glad to rule the world if they could;
but each had their defects, and their weaknesses
for such a position.

The elephant? Ah! Evolution has had its
tragedies, hasn’t it, as well as its triumphs; and
well should the elephant know it. He had the

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This Simian World

best chance of all. Wiser even than the lion, or
the wisest of apes, his wisdom furthermore was
benign where theirs was sinister. Consider his
dignity, his poise and skill. He was plastic, too.
He had learned to eat many foods and endure
many climates. Once, some say, this race ex¬
plored the globe. Their bones are found every¬
where, in South America even: so the elephants’
Columbus may have found some road here be¬
fore ours. They are cosmopolitans, these suave
and well-bred beings. They have rich emotional
natures, long memories, loyalty; they are steady
and sure; and not narrow, not self-absorbed, for
they seem interested in everything. What was it
then, that put them out of the race?

Could it have been a quite natural belief that
they had already won?

And when they saw that they hadn’t, and
that the monkey-men were getting ahead, were
they too great-minded and decent to exterminate
their puny rivals?

It may have been their tolerance and patience
that betrayed them. They wait too long before
they resent an imposition or insult. Just as ants

- 34 “

This Simian World

are too energetic and cats too shrewd for their
own highest good, so the elephants suffer from
too much patience. Their exhibitions of it may
seem superb,—such power and such restraint,
combined, are noble,—but a quality carried to
excess defeats itself. Kings who won t lift their
scepters must yield in the end; and, the worst
of it is, to upstarts who snatch at their crowns.

I fancy the elephants would have been gentler
masters than we: more live-and-let-live in allow¬
ing other species to stay here. Our way is to kill
good and bad, male and female and babies, till
the few last survivors lie hidden away from our
guns. All species must surrender unconditionally
—those are our terms—and come and live in
barns alongside us; or on us, as parasites. The
creatures that want to live a life of their own,
we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harm¬
less we treat them as outlaws, and those of us
who are specially well brought up shoot them
for fun. Some might be our friends. We don’t
wish it. We keep them all terrorized. When one
of us conquering monkey-men enters the woods.

~35“

This Simian World

most animals that scent him slink away, or race
off in a panic. It is not that we have planned
this deliberately: but they know what we’re like.
Race by race they have been slaughtered. Soon
all will be gone. We give neither freedom nor
life-room to those we defeat.

If we had been as strong as the elephants, we
might have been kinder. When great power
comes naturally to people, it is used more ur¬
banely. We use it as parv enus do, because that’s
what we are. The elephant, being bom to it, is
easy-going, confident, tolerant. He would have
been a more humane king.

A race descended from elephants would have
had to build on a large scale. Imagine a crowd
of huge, wrinkled, slow-moving elephant-men
getting into a vast elephant omnibus.

And would they have ever tried airships?

The elephant is stupid when it comes to learn¬
ing how to use tools. So are all other species
except our own. Isn’t it strange? A tool, in the
most primitive sense, is any object, lying around,
that can obviously be used as an instrument for

-36-

This Simian World

this or that purpose. Many creatures use objects
as materials , as birds use twigs for nests. But the
step that no animal takes is learning freely to use
things as instruments. When an elephant plucks
off a branch and swishes his flanks, and thus
keeps away insects, he is using a tool. But he
does it only by a vague and haphazard associa¬
tion of ideas. If he once became a conscious user
of tools he would of course go much further.

We ourselves, who are so good at it now,
were slow 7 enough in beginning. Think of the
long epochs that passed before it entered our
heads.

And all that while the contest for leadership
blindly went on, without any species making
use of this obvious aid. The lesson to be learned
was simple: the rew r ard was the rule of a planet.
Yet only one species, our own, has ever had that
much brains.

It makes you wonder what other obvious les¬
sons may still be unlearned.

It is not necessarily stupid however ; to fail
to use tools. To use tools involves using reason,

“37“

This Simian World

instead of sticking to instinct. Now, sticking to
instinct has its disadvantages, but so has using
reason. Whichever faculty you use, the other
atrophies, and partly deserts you. We are trying
to use both. But we still don’t know which has
the more value.

A sudden vision comes to me of one of the
first far-away ape-men who tried to use reason
instead of instinct as a guide for his conduct.
I imagine him, perched in his tree, tom between
those two voices, wailing loudly at night by a
river, in his puzzled distress.

My poor far-off brother!

EIGHT

We have been considering which species was
on the whole most finely equipped to be rulers,
and thereafter achieve a high civilization; but
that wasn't the problem. The real problem
was which would do it:—a different matter.

To do it there was need of a species that had
at least these two qualities: some quenchless
desire, to urge them on and on; and also adapt¬
ability of a thousand kinds to their environment.

The rhinoceros cares little for adaptability.
He slogs through the world. But we! we are
experts. Adaptability is what we depend on. We
talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very
grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt our¬
selves first, to her w r ays. “We attain no power
over nature till we learn natural laws, and our
lordship depends on the adroitness with which
w r e learn and conform.”

Adroitness however is merely an ability to
win; back of it there must be some spur to make

- 39 “

This Simian World

us use our adroitness. Why don’t we all die or
give up when we re sick of the world? Because
the love of life is reenforced, in most energized
beings, by some longing that pushes them for¬
ward, in defeat and in darkness. All creatures
wish to live, and to perpetuate their species, of
course; but those two wishes alone evidently do
not carry any race far. In addition to these, a
race, to be great, needs some hunger, some itch,
to spur it up the hard path we lately have learned
to call evolution. The love of toil in the ants,
and of craft in cats, are examples (imaginary or
not). What other such lust could exert great
driving force?

With us is it curiosity? endless interest in one’s
environment?

Many animals have some curiosity, but
“some’’ is not enough; and in but few is it one
of the master passions. By a master passion, I
mean a passion that is really your master: some
appetite which habitually, day in, day out, makes
its subjects forget fatigue or danger, and sacrifice
their ease to its gratification. That is the kind
of hold that curiosity has on the nonkeys.

-40-

NINE

Imagine a prehistoric prophet observing these
beings, and forecasting what kind of civilizations
their descendants would build. Anyone could
have foreseen certain parts of the simians’ his¬
tory: could have guessed that their curiosity
would unlock for them, one by one, nature’s
doors, and—idly—bestow on them stray bits of
valuable knowledge: could have pictured them
spreading inquiringly all over the globe, stum¬
bling on their inventions—and idly passing on
and forgetting them.

To have to learn the same thing over and over
again wastes the time of a race. But this is con¬
tinually necessary, with simians, because of their
disorder. “Disorder,” a prophet would have
sighed: “that is one of their handicaps; one that
they will never get rid of, whatever it costs.
Having so much curiosity makes a race scatter¬
brained.

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This Simian World

“Yes,” he would have dismally continued, “it
will be a queer mixture: these simians w r ill attain
to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is plain.
But after spending centuries groping to discover
some art, in after<enturies they will now and
then find it s forgotten. How incredible it would
seem on other planets to hear of lost arts.

“There is a strong streak of triviality in them,
which you don't see in cats. They won’t have fine
enough characters to concentrate on the things
of most weight. They will talk and think far
more of trifles than of what is important. Even
when they are reasonably civilized, this will be
so. Great discoveries sometimes will fail to be
heard of, because too much else is; and many
will thus disappear, and these men will not
know it.” 1

Let me interrupt this lament to say a word
for myself and my ancestors. It is easy to blame
us as undiscriminating, but we are at least full
of zest. And it’s well to be interested, eagerly

1 We did rescue Mendels from the dust heap; but perhaps
it was an exception.

- 42 -

This Simian World

and intensely, in so many things, because there
is often no knowing which may turn out im¬
portant. We don’t go around being interested on
purpose, hoping to profit by it, but a profit may
come. And anyway it is generous of us not to
be too self-absorbed. Other creatures go to the
other extreme to an amazing extent. They are
ridiculously oblivious to what is going on. The
smallest ant in the garden will ignore the largest
woman who visits it. She is a huge and most
dangerous super-mammoth in relation to him,
and her tread shakes the earth; but he has no
time to be bothered, investigating such-like
phenomena. He won't even get out of her way.
He has his work to do, hang it.

Birds and squirrels have less of this glorious
independence of spirit. They watch you closely
—if you move around. But not if you keep still.
In other words, they pay no more attention than
they can help, even to mammoths.

We of course observe everything, or try to.
We could spend our lives looking on. Consider
our museums for instance: they are a sign of our
breed. It makes us smile to see birds, like the

-43“

This Simian World

magpie, with a mania for this collecting—but
only monkeyish beings could reverence museums
as we do, and pile such heterogeneous trifles and
quantities in them. Old furniture, egg-shells,
watches, bits of stone. . . . And next door, a
“menagerie.” Though our victor)* over all other
animals is now aeons old, we still bring home
captives and exhibit them caged in our cities.
And when a species dies out—or is crowded ( by
us) off the planet—we even collect the bones of
the vanquished and show them like trophies.

Curiosity is a valuable trait. It will make the
simians learn many things. But the curiosity of
a simian is as excessive as the toil of an ant. Each
simian will wish to know more than his head
can hold, let alone ever deal with: and those
whose minds are active will wish to know every¬
thing going. It would stretch a god’s skull to
accomplish such an ambition, yet simians won’t
like to think it's beyond their powers. Even
small tradesmen and clerks, no matter how
thrifty, will be eager to buy costly encyclopedias,

-44-

This Simian World

or books of all knowledge. Almost every simian
family, even the dullest, will think it is due to
themselves to keep all knowledge handy.

Their idea of a liberal education will there¬
fore be a great hodge-podge; and he who narrows
his field and digs deep will be viewed as an
alien. If more than one man in a hundred should
thus dare to concentrate, the ruinous effects of
being a specialist will be sadly discussed. It may
make a man exceptionally useful, they will have
to admit; but still they will feel badly, and fear
that civilization will suffer.

One of their curious educational ideas—but
a natural one—will be shown in the efforts they
will make to learn more than one “language.”
They will set their young to spending a decade
or more of their lives in studying duplicate
systems—whole systems—of chatter. Those who
thus learn several different ways to say the same
things, will command much respect, and those
who learn many will be looked on with awe—by
true simians. And persons without this accom-

-45-

This Simian World

plishment will be looked down on a little, and
will actually feel quite apologetic about it them¬
selves.

Consider how enormously complicated a com¬
plete language must be, with its long and arbi¬
trary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds;
the many forms that single words may take,
especially if they are verbs; the rules of gram¬
mar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang
and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for
tongues these simians have ! 1 ^Vhere another
race, after the most frightful discord and pains,
might have slowly constructed one language be¬
fore this earth grew cold, this race will create
literally hundreds, each complete in itself, and
many of them with quaint little systems of writ¬
ing attached. And the owners of this linguistic
gift are so humble about it, they will marvel at
bees, for their hives, and at beavers* mere dams.

To return, however, to their fear of being too

1 You remember what Kipling says in the Jungle Books, about
how disgusted the quiet animals were with the Bandarlog,

because they were eternally chattering, would never keep still.
Well, this is the good side of it.

-46-

This Simian World

narrow, in going to the other extreme they will
run to incredible lengths. Every civilized simian,
every day of his life, in addition to whatever
older facts he has picked up, will wish to know
all the news of all the world. If he felt any true
concern to know it, this would be rather fine of
him: it would imply such a close solidarity on the
part of this genus. (Such a close solidarity would
seem crushing, to others; but that is another
matter.) It won’t be true concern, however, it
will be merely a blind inherited instinct. He’ll
forget what he’s read, the very next hour, or
moment. Yet there he will faithfully sit, the
ridiculous creature, reading of bombs in Spain
or floods in Thibet, and especially insisting on
all the news he can get of the kind our race
loved when they scampered and fought in the
forest, news that will stir his most primitive
simian feelings,—wars, accidents, love affairs,
and family quarrels.

To feed himself with this largely purposeless
provender, he will pay thousands of simians to
be reporters of such events day and night; and
they will report them on such a voluminous

-47-

This Simian World

scale as to smother or obscure more significant
news altogether. Great printed sheets will be
read by every one every day; and even the laziest
of this lazy race will not think it labor to perform
this toil. They won't like to eat in the morning
without their papers, such slaves they will be
to this droll greed for knowing. They won't even
think it is droll, it is so in their blood.

Their swollen desire for investigating every¬
thing about them, including especially other
people’s affairs, will be quenchless. Few will feel
that they really are “fully informed"; and all
will give much of each day all their lives to the
news.

Books too will be used to slake this unap-

-48-

This Simian World

peasable thirst. They will actually hold books
in deep reverence. Books! Bottled chatter! things
that some other simian has formerly said. They
will dress them in costly bindings, keep them
under glass, and take an affecting pride in the
number they read. Libraries,—store-houses of
books,—will dot their world. The destruction of
one will be a crime against civilization. (Mean¬
ing, again, a simian civilization.) Well, it is an
offense to be sure—a barbaric offense. But so is
defacing forever a beautiful landscape; and they
won't even notice that sometimes; they won t
shudder anyway, the way they instinctively do
at the loss of a “library.”

All this is inevitable and natural, and they
cannot help it. There even are ways one can
justify excesses like this. If their hunger for
books ever seems indiscriminate to them when
they themselves stop to examine it, they will
have their excuses. They will argue that some
bits of knowledge they once had thought futile,
had later on come in most handy, in unthought
of ways. True enough! For their scientists. But

-49-

This Simian World

not for their average men: they will simply be
like obstinate housekeepers who clog up their
homes, preserving odd boxes and wrappings, and
stray lengths of string, to exult if but one is of
some trifling use ere they die. It will be in this
spirit that simians will cherish their books, and
pile them up everywhere into great indiscrimi¬
nate mounds; and these mounds will seem signs
of culture and sagacity to them.

Those who know many facts will feel wise!
They will despise those who don’t. They will
even believe, many of them, that knowledge is
power. Unfortunate dupes of this saying will
keep on reading, ambitiously, till they have
stunned their native initiative, and made their
thoughts weak; and will then wonder dazedly
what in the world is the matter, and why the
great power they were expecting to gain fails
to appear. Again, if they ever forget what they
read, they'll be worried. Those who can forget—
those with fresh eyes who have swept from their
minds such facts as the exact month and day that
their children were born, or the numbers on
houses, or the names (the mere meaningless

— 50 —

This Simian World

labels) of the people they meet,—will be urged
to go live in sanitariums or see memory doctors!

By nature their itch is rather for knowing,
than for understanding or thinking. Some of
them will learn to think, doubtless, and even to
concentrate, but their eagerness to acquire those
accomplishments will not be strong or insistent.
Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity will
enjoy the accumulating of facts, far more than
the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.
If they do not reflect on them, of course they’ll
be slow to find out about the ideas and relation¬
ships lying behind them; and they will be curious
about those ideas; so you would suppose they’d
reflect. But deep thinking is painful. It means
they must channel the spready rivers of their
attention. That cannot be done without disci¬
pline and drills for the mind; and they w ill abhor
doing that; their minds will w T ork better w r hen
they are left free to run off at tangents.

Compare them in this with other species.
Each has its ow T n kind of strength. To be com¬
pelled to be so quick-minded as the simians

— 5 1 “

This Simian World

would be torture, to cows. Cows could dwell on
one idea, week by week, without trying at all;
but they’d all have brain-fever in an hour at a
simian tea. A super-cow people would revel in
long thoughtful books on abstruse philosophical
subjects, and would sit up late reading them.
Most of the ambitious simians who try it—out
of pride—go to sleep. The typical simian brain
is supremely distractable, and it’s really too
jumpy by nature to endure much reflection.

Therefore many more of them will be well-
informed than sagacious.

This will result in their knowing most things
far too soon, at too early a stage of civilization
to use them aright. They will learn to make
valuable explosives at a stage in their grotvth,
when they will use them not only in industries,
but for killing brave men. They will devise ways
to mine coal efficiently, in enormous amounts,
at a stage when they won’t know enough to con¬
serve it, and will waste their few stores. They
will use up a lot of it in a simian habit 1 called

i Even in a wild state, the monkey is restless and does not

This Simian World

travel. This will consist in queer little hurried
runs over the globe, to see ten thousand things
in the hope of thus filling their minds.

Their minds will be full enough. Their in¬
telligence will be active and keen. It will have a
constant tendency however to outstrip their
wisdom. Their intelligence will enable them to
build great industrial systems before they have
the wisdom and goodness to run them aright.
They will form greater political empires than
they will have strength to guide. They will end¬
lessly quarrel about which is the best scheme
of government, without stopping to realize that
learning to govern comes first. (The average
simian will imagine he knows without learning.)

The natural result will be industrial and
political wars. In a world of unmanageable
structures, wild smashes must come.

-53-

TEX

Inventions will come so easily to simians (in
comparison with all other creatures) and they
will take such childish pleasure in monkeying
around, making inventions, that their many de¬
vices will be more of a care than a comfort. In
their homes a large part of their time will have
to be spent keeping their numerous ingenuities
in good working order—their elaborate bell¬
ringing arrangements, their locks and their
clocks. In the field of science to be sure, this
fertility in invention will lead to a long list of
important and beautiful discoveries: telescopes
and the calculus, radiographs, and the spectrum.
Discoveries great enough, almost, to make angels
of them. But here again their simian-ness will
cheat them of half of their dues, for they will
neglect great discoveries of the truest impor¬
tance, and honor extravagantly those of less

-54“

This Simian World

value and splendor if only they cater especially
to simian traits.

To consider examples: A discovery that helps
them to talk, just to talk, more and more, will
be hailed by these beings as one of the highest
of triumphs. Talking to each other over wires
will come in this class. The lightning w r hen har¬
nessed and tamed will be made to trot round,
conveying the most trivial cacklings all day and
night.

Huge seas of talk of every sort and kind, in
print, speech, and writing, will roll unceasingly
over their civilized realms, involving an un¬
believable waste in labor and time, and sapping
the intelligence talk is supposed to upbuild. In
a simian civilization, great halls will be erected
for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay
to go inside at night to hear some self-satisfied
talk-maker chatter for hours. Almost any subject
will do for a lecture, or talk; yet very few sub¬
jects will be counted important enough for the
average man to do any thinking on them, off by
himself.

-55“

This Smiia?i World

In their futurist books they will dream of an
even worse state, a more dreadful indulgence
in communication than the one just described.
This they’ll hope to achieve by a system called
mental telepathy. They will long to communi¬
cate wordlessly, mind impinging on mind,
until all their minds are awash with messages
every moment, and withdrawal from the stream
is impossible anywhere on earth. This will foster
the brotherhood of man. (Conglomerateness be¬
ing their ideal.) Super-cats would have invented
more barriers instead of more channels.

Discoveries in surgery and medicine will also
be over-praised. The reason will be that the race
will so need these discoveries. Unlike the great
cats, simians tend to undervalue the body. Hav¬
ing less self-respect, less proper regard for their
egos, they care less than the cats do for the casing
of the ego,—the body. The more civilized they
grow the more they will let their bodies deterio¬
rate. They will let their shoulders stoop, their
lungs shrink, and their stomachs grow fat. No
other species will be quite so deformed and dis¬
torted. Athletics they will watch, yes, but on the

-56-

This Simian World

<

whole sparingly practise. Their snuffy old schol¬
ars will even be proud to decry them. Where
once the simians swung high through forests, or
scampered like deer, their descendants will plod
around farms, or mince along city streets, mov¬
ing constrictedly, slowly, their litheness half
gone.

They will think of Nature as ‘‘something to
go out and look at." They will try to live wholly
apart from her and forget they’re her sons. For¬
get? They will even deny it, and declare them¬
selves sons of God. In spite of her wonders they
will regard Nature as somehow too humble to be
the true parent of such prominent people as
simians. They will lose all respect for the dignity
of fair Mother Earth, and whisper to each other
she is an evil and indecent old person. They will
snatch at her gifts, pry irreverently into her mys¬
teries, and ignore half the warnings they get
from her about how to live.

Ailments of every kind will abound among
such folk, inevitably, and they will resort to ex¬
traordinary expedients in their search for relief.
Although squeamish as a race about inflicting

-57“

This Simian World

much pain in cold blood, they will systematically
infect other animals with their own rank dis¬
eases, or cut out other animals* organs, or kill
and dissect them, hoping thus to learn how to
offset their neglect of themselves. Conditions
among them will be such that this will really be
necessary. Few besides impractical sentimental¬
ists will therefore oppose it. But the idea will be
to gain health by legerdemain, by a trick, instead
of by taking the trouble to live healthy lives.

Strange barrack-like buildings called hospitals
will stand in their cities, where their trick-men,
the surgeons, will slice them right open when ill:
and thousands of zealous young pharmacists will
mix little drugs, which thousands of wise-looking
simians will firmly prescribe. Each generation
will change its mind as to these drugs, and laugh
at all former opinions; but each will use some
of them, and each will feel assured that in this
respect they know the last word.

And, in obstinate blindness, this people will
wag their poor heads, and attribute their diseases
not to simian-ness but to civilization.

-58-

This Simian World

The advantages that any man or race has, can
sometimes be handicaps. Having hands, which
so aids a race, for instance, can also be harmful.
The simians will do so many things with their
hands, it will be bad for their bodies. Instead of
roaming far and wide over the country, getting
vigorous exercise, they will use their hands to
catch and tame horses, build carriages, motors,
and then when they want a good outing they will
'‘go for a ride,” with their bodies slumped down,
limp and sluggish, and losing their spring.

Then too their brains will do harm, and great
harm, to their bodies. The brain will give them
such an advantage over all other animals that
they will insensibly be led to rely too much on it,
to give it too free a rein, and to find the mirrors
in it too fascinating. This organ, this outgrowth,
this new part of them, will grow over-active, and
its many fears and fancies will naturally injure
the body. The interadjustment is delicate and
intimate, the strain is continuous. When the
brain fails to act with the body, or, worse, wx>rks
against it, the body will sicken no matter what
cures doctors try.

~59“

This Simian World

As in bodily self-respect, so in racial self-
respect, they’ll be wanting. They will have
plenty of racial pride and prejudice, but that is
not the same thing. That will make them angry
when simians of one color mate with those of
another. But a general deterioration in physique
will cause much less excitement.

They will talk about improving the race—they
will talk about everything—but they won’t use
their chances to do it. Whenever a new discovery
makes life less hard, for example, these heedless
beings will seldom presene this advantage, or
use their new wealth to take more time there¬
after for thought, or to gain health and strength
or do anything else to make the race better. In¬
stead, they will use the new ease just to increase
in numbers; and they will keep on at this until
misery once more has checked them. Life will
then be as hard as ever, naturally, and the chance
will be gone.

They will have a proverb. “The poor ye have
always with you,”—said by one who knew
simians.

Their ingenious minds will have an answer to

— Go —

This Simian World

this. They will argue it is well that life should be
Spartan and hard, because of the discipline and
its strengthening effects on the character. But
the good effects of this sort of discipline will be
mixed with sad wreckage. And only creatures
incapable of disciplining themselves could thus
argue. It is an odd expedient to get yourself into
trouble just for discipline s sake.

The fact is, however, the argument won t be
sincere. When their nations grow so over-popu¬
lous and their families so large it means misery,
that will not be a sign of their having felt ready
for discipline. It will be a sign of their not having
practised it in their sexual lives.

— hi

ELEVEN

The simians are always being stirred by desire
and passion. It constantly excites them, con¬
stantly runs through their minds. W ild or tame,
primitive or cultured, this is a brand of the
breed. Other species have times and seasons for
sexual matters, but the simian-folk are thus pre¬
occupied all the year round.

This super-abundance of desire is not neces¬
sarily good or bad, of itself. But to shape it for
the best it will have to be studied—and faced.
This they will not do. Some of them won t like
to study it, deeming it bad—deeming it bad yet
yielding constantly to it. Others will hesitate be¬
cause they will deem it so sacred, or will secretly
fear that study might show them it ought to be
curbed.

Meantime, this part of their nature will be
coloring all their activities. It will beautify their
arts, and erotically confuse their religions. It

— 62 —

This Simian World

will lend a little interest to even their dull social
functions. It will keep alive degrading social
evils in all their great towns. Through these lat¬
ter evils, too, their politics will be corrupted;
especially their best and most democratic at¬
tempts at self-government. Self-government
works best among those who have learned to
self-go vern.

In the far distant ages that lie before us what
will be the result of this constant preoccupation
with desire? Will it kill us or save us? Will this
trait and our insatiable curiosity interact on each
other? That might further eugenics. That might
give us a better chance to breed finely than all
other species.

We already owe a great deal to passion: more
than men ever realize. Wasn’t it Darwin who
once even risked the conjecture that the vocal
organs themselves were developed for sexual
purposes, the object being to call or charm one’s
mate. Hence—perhaps—only animals that were
continuously concerned with their matings

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This Simian World

would be at all likely to form an elaborate lan¬
guage. And without an elaborate language,
growth is apt to be slow.

If we owe this to passion, what follows? Does
it mean, for example, that the more different
mates that each simian once learned to charm,
the more rapidly language, and with it civiliza¬
tion, advanced?

TW EL V E

A doctor, who was making a study of monkeys,
once told me that he was trying experiments that
bore on the polygamy question. He had a young
monkey named Jack who had mated with a fe¬
male named Jill; and in another cage another
newly-wedded pair, Arabella and Archer. Each
pair seemed absorbed in each other, and devoted
and happy. They even hugged each other at
mealtime and exchanged bits of food.

After a time their transports grew less fiery,
and their affections less fixed. Archer got a bit
bored. He was decent about it, though, and
when Arabella cuddled beside him he would
more or less perfunctorily embrace her. But
when he forgot, she grew cross.

The same thing occurred a little later in the
Jack and Jill cage, only there it was Jill who be¬
came a little tired of Jack.

Soon each pair was quarreling. They usually

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k

This Simian World

ftLf tmu made U P’ P rett y

soon, and started
loving again.
But it petered
out; each time
more quickly.

Meanwhile
the two fam¬
ilies had be¬
come interested
in watching each

other. WTien Jill had repulsed Jack, and he
had moped about it awhile, he would begin
staring at Arabella, over opposite, and trving
to attract her attention. This got Jack in trouble
all around. Arabella indignantly made faces at
him and then turned her back; and as for Jill,
she grew furious, and tore out his fur.

But in the next stage, they even stopped hat¬
ing each other. Each pair grew indifferent.

Then the doctor put Jack in with Arabella,
and Archer with Jill. Arabella promptly yielded
to Jack. New devotion. More transports. Jill and
Archer were shocked. Jill clung to the bars of

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This Simian World

her cage, quivering, and screaming remon¬
strance; and even blase Archer chattered angrily
at some of the scenes. Then the doctor hung cur¬
tains between the cages to shut out the view. J ill
and Archer, left to each other, grew interested.
They soon were inseparable.

The four monkeys, thus re-distributed, were
now happy once more, and full of new liveliness
and spirit. But before very long, each pair quar¬
reled—and made up—and quarreled—and then
grew indifferent, and had cynical thoughts about
life.

At this point, the doctor put them back with
their original mates.

And—they met with a rush! Gave cries of
recognition and joy, like faithful souls reunited.
And when they were tired, they affectionately
curled up together; and hugged each other even
at mealtime, and exchanged bits of food.

This was as far as the doctor had gotten, at the
time that I met him; and as I have lost touch
with him since, I don’t know how things were
afterward. His theory at the time was, that vari-

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This Simian World

ety was good for fidelity.

“So many of us feel this way, it may be in the
blood, ” he concluded. “Some creatures, such as
wolves, are more serious; or perhaps more cold¬
blooded. Never mate but once. Well—we’re not
wolves. We can t make wolves our models. Of
course we are not monkeys either, but at any
rate they are our cousins. Perhaps wolves can be
continent without any trouble at all, but it’s
harder for simians: it may affect their nervous
systems injuriously. If we want to know how to
behave, according to the way Nature made us. I
say that with all due allowances we should study
the monkeys.”

To be sure, these particular monkeys were liv¬
ing in idleness. This corresponds to living in
high social circles with us, where men do not
have to work, and lack some of the common in¬
centives to home-building. The experiment was
not conclusive.

Still, even in low social circles—

-68-

T HIRTEEN

Are we or are we not simians? It is no use for
any man to try to think anything else out until
he has decided first of all where he stands on that
question. It is not only in love affairs: let us lay
all that aside for the moment. It is in ethics,
economics, art, education, philosophy, what-not.
If we are fallen angels, we should go this road: if
we are super-apes, that.

“Our problem is not to discover what we
ought to do if we were different, but what we
ought to do, being what we are. There is no end
to the beings we can imagine different from our¬
selves; but they do not exist,” and we cannot be
sure they would be better than we if they did.
For, when we imagine them, we must imagine
their entire environment; they would have to be
a part of some whole that does not now exist.
And that new whole, that new reality, being
merely a figment of our little minds, “would

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This Simian World

probably be inferior to the reality that is. For
there is this to be said in favor of reality: that we
have nothing to compare it with. Our fantasies
are always incomplete, because they are fantasies.
And reality is complete. We cannot compare
their incompleteness with its completeness.” 1

Too many moralists begin with a dislike of
reality: a dislike of men as they are. They are
fi ee to dislike them—but not at the same time to
be moralists. Their feeling leads them to ignore
the obligation which should rest on all teachers,
“to discover the best that man can do. not to set
impossibilities before him and tell him that if
he does not perform them he is damned.”

Man is moldable; very; and it is desirable that
he should aspire. But he is apt to be hasty about
accepting any and all general ideals without fig¬
uring out whether they are suitable for simian
use.

One result of his habit of swallowing whole
most of the ideals that occur to him, is that he
has swallowed a number that strongly conflict.

1 From an anonymous article entitled “Tolstoy and Russia”
in the London Times, Sept. 26, 1918.

This Simian World

Any ideal whatever strains our digestions if it is
hard to assimilate: but when two at once act on
us in different ways, it is unbearable. In such a
case, the poets will prefer the ideal that’s ideal-
est: the hard-headed instinctively choose the one
adapted to simians.

Whenever this is argued, extremists spring up
on each side. One extremist will say that being
mere simians we cannot transcend much, and
will seem to think that having limitations we
should preserve them forever. The other will
declare that we are not merely simians, never
were just plain animals; or, if we were, souls were
somehow smuggled in to us, since which time
we have been different. We have all been perfect
at heart since that date, equipped with beautiful
spirits, which only a strange perverse obstinacy
leads us to soil.

What this obstinacy is, is the problem that
confronts theologians. They won’t think of it as
simian-ness; they call it original sin. They regard
it as the voice of some devil, and say good men
should not listen to it. The scientists say it isn’t
a devil, it is part of our nature, which should of

“ 7 1 -

This Simian World

course be civilized and guided, but should not
be stamped out. (It might mutilate us danger¬
ously to become under-simianized. Look at
Mrs. Humphry Ward and George Washington.
Worthy souls, but no flavor.)

In every field of thought then, two schools ap¬
pear. that are divided on this: Must we forever
be at heart high-grade simians? Or are we at
heart something else?

For example, in education, we have in the
main two great systems. One depends upon dis¬
cipline. The other on exciting the interest. The
teacher who does not recognize or allow for our
simian nature, keeps little children at work for
long periods at dull and dry tasks. W ithout some
such discipline, he fears that his boys will lack
strength. The other system believes they will
leam more when their interest is roused; and
when their minds, which are mobile by nature,
are allowed to keep moving.

Or in politics: the best government for simi¬
ans seems to be based on a parliament: a talk-
room, where endless vague thoughts can be

- 72 “

This Simian World

expressed. This is the natural child of those
primeval sessions that gave pleasure to apes. It
is neither an ideal nor a rational arrangement of
course. Small executive committees would be
better. But not if we are simians.

Or in industry: Why do factory workers pro¬
duce more in eight hours a day than in ten? It
is absurd. Super-sheep could not do it. But that
is the way men are made. To preach to such be¬
ings about the dignity of labor is futile. The
dignity of labor is not a simian conception at all.
True simians hate to have to work steadily: they
call it grind and confinement. They are always
ready to pity the toilers who are condemned to
this fate, and to congratulate those who escape
it, or who can do something else. When they see
some performer in spangles risk his life, at a
circus, swinging around on trapezes, high up in
the air, and when they are told he must do it
daily, do they pity him? No! Super-elephants
would say, and quite properly, “What a horrible
life!” But it naturally seems stimulating to simi¬
ans. Boys envy the fellow. On the other hand
whenever we are told about factory life, we in-

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This Simian World

stinctively shudder to think of enduring such
evils. We see some old workman, filling cans with
a whirring machine; and we hear the humani¬
tarians telling us, indignant and grieving, that
he actually must stand in that nice, warm, dry
room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts,
and with nothing to do but fill cans; and at once
we groan: “How deadly! WTiat monotonous toil!
Shorten his hours!” His work would seem bliss¬
ful to super-spiders,—but to us its intolerable.
The factory system is meant for other species
than ours.

Our monkey-blood is also apparent in our
judgments of crime. If a crime is committed on
impulse, we partly forgive it. Why? Because, be¬
ing simians, with a weakness for yielding to im¬
pulses, we like to excuse ourselves by feeling not
accountable for them. Elephants would have
probably taken an opposite stand. They aren’t
creatures of impulse, and would be shocked at
crimes due to such causes: their fault is the op¬
posite one of pondering too long over injuries,
and becoming vindictive in the end, out of all
due proportion. If a young super-elephant were

-74“

This Simian World

to murder another on impulse, they would con¬
sider him a dangerous character and string him
right up. But if he could prove that he had long
thought of doing it, they would tend to forgive
him. “Poor fellow, he brooded,” they would say.
“That's upsetting to any one.”

As to modesty and decency, if we are simians
we have done well, considering: but if we are
something else—fallen angels—we have indeed
fallen far. Not being modest by instinct we in¬
vent artificial ideals, which are doubtless well-
meaning but are inherently of course second-
rate, so that even at our best we smell prudish.
And as for our worst, when we as we say let our¬
selves go, we dirty the life-force unspeakably,
with chuckles and leers. But a race so indecent
by nature as the simians are would naturally have
a hard time behaving as though they were not:
and the strain of pretending that their thoughts
were all pretty and sweet, would naturally send
them to smutty extremes for relief. The stand¬
ards of purity we have adopted are far too strict
—for simians.

-75-

FOUR TEEN

We were speaking a while ago of the fertility
with which simians breed. This is partly due to
the constant love interest they take in each other,
but it is also reenforced by their reliance on
numbers. That reliance will be deep, since, to
their numbers, they will owe much success. It
will be thus that they will drive out other species,
and garrison the globe. Such a race would natu¬
rally come to esteem fertility. It will seem pro¬
fane not to.

As time goes on, however, the advantage of
numbers will end; and in their higher stages,
large numbers will be a great drawback. The re¬
sources of a planet are limited, at each stage of
the arts. Also, there is only a limited space on a
planet. Yet it will come hard to them to think
of ever checking their increase. They will bring
more young into existence than they can either
keep well or feed. The earth will be covered with

— 76-

This Simian World

them everywhere, as far as eye can see. North
and south, east and west, there will always be
simians huddling. Their cities will be far more
distressing than cities of vermin,—for vermin are
healthy and calm and successful in life.

Ah, those masses of people—unintelligent, su¬
perstitious, uncivilized! What a dismal drain
they will be on the race’s strength! Not merely
will they lessen its ultimate chance of achieve¬
ment; their hardships will always distress and
preoccupy minds,—fine, generous minds,—that
might have done great things if free: that might
have done something constructive at least, for
their era, instead of being burned out attacking
mere anodyne-problems.

Nature will do what it can to lessen the strain,
providing an appropriate remedy for their bad
behavior in plagues. Many epochs will pass be¬
fore the simians will learn or dare to control
them—for they won't think they can, any more
than they dare control propagation. They will
reverently call their propagation and plagues
“acts of God.” When they get tired of reverence
and stop their plagues, it will be too soon. Their

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This Simian World

inventiveness will be—as usual—ahead of their
wisdom; and they will unfortunately end the
good effects of plagues (as a check) before they
are advanced enough to keep down their num¬
bers themselves.

Meanwhile, when, owing to the pressure of
other desires, any group of primates does happen
to become less prolific, they will feel ashamed,
talk of race suicide, and call themselves deca¬
dent. And they will often be right: for though
some regulation of the birth-rate is an obvious
good, and its diminution often desirable in any
planet’s history, yet among simians it will be apt
to come from second-rate motives. Greed, selfish¬
ness or fear-thoughts will be the incentives, the
bribes. Contrivances, rather than continence,
will be the method. How audacious, and how
disconcerting to Nature, to baffle her thus! Even
into her shrine they must thrust their bold paws
to control her. Another race viewing them in the
garlanded chambers of love, unpacking their
singular devices, might think them grotesque:
but the busy little simians will be blind to such
quaint incongruities.

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This Simian World

Still, there is a great gift that their excess of
passion will bestow on this race: it will give them
romance. It will teach them what little they ever
will learn about love. Other animals have little
romance: there is none in the rut: that seasonal
madness that drives them to mate with perhaps
the first comer. But the simians will attain to a
fine discrimination in love, and this will be their
path to the only spiritual heights they can reach.
For, in love, their inmost selves will draw near,
in the silence of truth; learning little by little
what the deepest sincerity means, and what clean
hearts and minds and what crystal-clear sight it
demands. Such intercommunication of spirit
with spirit is at the beginning of all true under¬
standing. It is the beginning of silent cosmic
wisdom: it may lead to knowing the ways of that
power called God.

-79-

FIFTEEN

Not content with the whole of a planet and
themselves too, to study, this race’s children will
also study the heavens. How few kinds of crea¬
tures would ever have felt that impulse, and yet
how natural it will seem to these! How bound¬
less and magnificent is the curiosity of these tiny
beings, who sit and peer out at the night from
their small whirling globe, considering deeply
the huge cold seas of space, and learning with
wonderful skill to measure the stars.

In studies so vast, however, they are tested to
the core. In these great journeys the traveler
must pay dear for his flaws. For it always is when
you most finely are exerting your strength that
every weakness you have most tells against you.

One weakness of the primates is the character
of their self-consciousness. This useful faculty,
that can probe so deep, has one naive defect—it
relies too readily on its own findings. It doesn’t

— So —

This Simian World

suspect enough its own unconfessed predilec¬
tions. It assumes that it can be completely im¬
partial—but isn’t. To instance an obvious way
in which it will betray them: beings that are
intensely self-conscious and aware of their selves,
will also instinctively feel that their universe is.
What active principle animates the world, they
will ask. A great blind force? It is possible. But
they will recoil from admitting any such possibil¬
ity. A self-aware purposeful force then? That is
better! (More simian.) “A blind force can’t have
been the creator of all. It’s unthinkable." Any
theory their brains find "unthinkable" cannot
be true.

(This is not to argue that it really is a blind
force—or the opposite. It is merely an instance
of how little impartial they are.)

A second typical weakness of this race will
come from their fears. They are not either self-
sufficing or gallant enough to travel great roads
without cringing,—clear-eyed, unafraid. They
are finely made, but not nobly made,—in that
sense. They will therefore have a too urgent need

— 81 —

This Simian World

of religion. Few primates have the courage to
face—alone—the still inner mysteries: Infin¬
ity, Space and Time. They will think it too ter¬
rible, they will feel it would turn them to water,
to live through unearthly moments of vision
without creeds or beliefs. So they’ll get beliefs
first. Ah, poor creatures! The cart before the
horse! Ah, the blasphemy (pitiful!) of their seek¬
ing high spiritual temples, with god-maps or
bibles about them, made below in advance!
Think of their entering into the presence of
Truth, declaring so loudly and boldly they know
her already, yet far from willing to stand or fall
by her flames—to rise like a phoenix or die as an
honorable cinder!—but creeping in, clad in their
queer blindfolded beliefs, designed to shield
them from her stem, bright tests! Think of
Truth sadly—or merrily—eyeing such worms!

-82-

SIXTEEN

Imagine you are watching the Bandarlog at play
in the forest. As you behold them and compre¬
hend their natures, now hugely brave and boast¬
ful, now full of dread, the most weakly emotional
of any intelligent species, ever trying to attract
the notice of some greater animal, not happy in¬
deed unless noticed,—is it not plain they are
bound to invent things called gods? Don’t think
for the moment of whether there are gods or not;
think of how sure these beings would be to in¬
vent them. (Not wait to find them.) Having
small self-reliance they can not bear to face life
alone. With no self-sufficingness, they must have
the countenance of others. It is these pressing
needs that will hurry the primates to build, out
of each shred of truth they can possibly twist to
their purpose, and out of imaginings that will
impress them because they are vast, deity after
deity to prop up their souls.

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This Simian World

What a strange company they will be, these
gods, in their day, each of them an old bearded
simian up in the sky, who begins by fishing the
universe out of a void, like a conjurer taking a
rabbit out of a hat. (A hat which, if it resembled
a void, wasn't there.) And after creating enor¬
mous suns and spheres, and filling the farthest
heavens with vaster stars, one god will turn back
and long for the smell of roast flesh, another will
call desert tribes to “holy" wars, and a third will
grieve about divorce or dancing.

All gods that any groups of simians ever con¬
ceive of, from the woodenest little idol in the
forest to the mightiest Spirit, no matter how
much they may differ, will have one trait in com¬
mon: a readiness to drop any cosmic affair at
short notice, focus their minds on the far-away
pellet called Earth, and become immediately
wholly concerned, aye, engrossed, with any indi¬
vidual worshipper’s woes or desires,—a readiness
to notice a fellow when he is going to bed. This
will bring indescribable comfort to simian
hearts; and a god that neglects this duty won’t

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This Simian World

last very long, no matter how competent he may
be in other respects.

But one must reciprocate. For the maker of
the Cosmos, as they see him, wants noticing too;
he is fond of the deference and attention that
simians pay him, and naturally he will be angry
if it is withheld;—or if he is not, it will be most
magnanimous of him. Hence prayers and hymns.
Hence queer vague attempts at communing with
this noble kinsman.

To desire communion with gods is a lofty
desire, but hard to attain through an ignobly
definite creed. Dealing with the highest, most
wordless states of being, the simians will attempt
to conceive them in material form. They will
have beliefs, for example, as to the furnishings
and occupations in heaven. And why? Why, to
help men to have religious conceptions without
themselves being seers,—which in any true sense
of “religious” is an impossible plan.

In their efforts to be concrete they will make
their creeds amusingly simian. Consider the

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This Simian World

simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls
on Olympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible,
what tempts the first pair? The Tree of Knowl¬
edge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of
their nature, and who could control that!

And Satan in the Bible is distinctly a simians
devil. The snake, it is known, is the animal
monkeys most dread. Hence when men give their
devil a definite form they make him a snake. A
race of super-chickens would have pictured their
devil a hawk.

-86-

J

SEVENTEEN

What are the handicaps this race will have in
building religions? The greatest is this: they
have such small psychic powers. The over-activ¬
ity of their minds will choke the birth of such
powers, or dull them. The race will be less in
touch with Nature, some day, than its dogs. It
will substitute the compass for its once innate
sense of direction. It will lose its gifts of natural
intuition, premonition, and rest, by encouraging
its use of the mind to be cheaply incessant.

This lack of psychic power will cheat them of
insight and poise; for minds that are wandering
and active, not receptive and still, can seldom or
never be hushed to a warm inner peace.

One service these restless minds however will
do: they eventually will see through the religions
they themselves invented.

But ages will be thrown away in repeating this
process.

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This Simian World

A simian creed will not be very hard thus to
pierce. When forming a religion, they will be in
far too much haste, to wait to apply a strict test to
their holy men’s visions. Furthermore they will
have so few visions, that any will awe them; so
naturally they will accept any vision as valid.
Then their rapid and fertile inventiveness will
come into play, and spin the wildest creeds from
each vision living dust ever dreamed.

They will next expect everybody to believe
whatever a few men have seen, on the slippery
ground that if you simply try believing it, you
will then feel it’s true. Such religions are vicari¬
ous; their prophets alone will see God. and the
rest will be supposed to be introduced to him by
the prophets. These “believers” will have no
white insight at all of their own.

Now, a second-hand believer who is warmed
at one remove—if at all—by the breath of the
spirit, will want to have exact definitions in the
beliefs he accepts. Not having had a vision to go
by, he needs plain commandments. He will al¬
ways try to crystallize creeds. And that, plainly,
is fatal. For as time goes on, new and remoter

- 88 -

This Simian World

aspects of truth are discovered, which can seldom
or never be fitted into creeds that are changeless.

Over and over again, this will be the process:
A spiritual personality will be born; see new
truth; and be killed. His new truth not only will
not fit into too rigid creeds, but whatever false
finality is in them it must contradict. So, the seer
will be killed.

His truth being mighty, however, it will kill
the creeds too.

There will then be nothing left to believe in—
except the dead seer.

For a few generations he may then be under¬
standing^ honored. But his priests will feel that
is not enough: he must be honored uncritically:
so uncritically that, whatever his message, it must
be deemed the Whole Truth. Some of his mes¬
sage they themselves will have garbled; and it
was not, at best, final; but still it will be made
into a fixed creed and given his name. Truth
will be given his name. All men who thereafter
seek truth must find only his kind, else they
won’t be his “followers.” (To be his co-seekers

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This Simian World

won’t do.) Priests will always hate any new seers
who seek further for truth. Their feeling will be
that their seer found it, and thus ended all that.
Just believe what he says. The job s over. No
more truth need be sought.

It’s a comforting thing to believe cosmic search
nicely settled.

Thus the mold will be hardened. So new
truths, when they come, can but break it. Then
men will feel distraught and disillusioned, and
civilizations will fall.

Thus each cycle will run. So long as men in¬
tertwine falsehoods with every seer’s visions,
both perish, and every civilization that is built
on them must perish too.

-90-

EIGHTEEN

If men can ever learn to accept all their truths as
not final, and if they can ever learn to build on
something better than dogma, they may not be
found saying, discouragedly, every once in so
often, that every civilization carries in it the
seeds of decay. It will carry such seeds with great
certainty, though, when they’re put there, by
the very race, too, that will later deplore the re¬
sults. Why shouldn’t creeds totter when they are
jerry-built creeds?

On stars where creeds come late in the life of
a race; where they spring from the riper, not
cruder, reactions of spirit; where they grow out
of nobly developed psychic powers that have put
their possessors in tune with cosmic music; and
where no cheap hallucinations discredit their
truths; they perhaps run a finer, more beautiful
course than the simians’, and open the eyes of
the soul to far loftier visions.

- 9 1 “

NINE TEEN

It has always been a serious matter for men when
a civilization decayed. But it may at some future
day prove far more serious still. Our hold on
the planet is not absolute. Our descendants may
lose it.

Germs may do them out of it. A chestnut fun¬
gus springs up. defies us, and kills all our chest¬
nuts. The boll weevil very nearly baffles us. The
fly seems unconquerable. Only a strong civiliza¬
tion, when such foes are about, can preserve us.
And our present efforts to cope with such beings
are fumbling and slow.

We haven't the habit of candidly facing this
danger. We read our biological history but we
don't take it in. We blandly assume we were al¬
ways “intended” to rule, and that no other out¬
come could even be considered by Nature. This
is one of the remnants of ignorance certain re¬
ligions have left: but it’s odd that men who don’t

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This Simian World

believe in Easter should still believe this. For the
facts are of course this is a hard and precarious
world, where every mistake and infirmity must
be paid for in full.

If mankind ever is swept aside as a failure how¬
ever, what a brilliant and enterprising failure he
at least will have been. I felt this with a kind of
warm suddenness only today, as I finished these
dreamiugs and drove through the gates of the
park. I had been shutting my modern surround¬
ings out of my thoughts, so completely, and liv¬
ing as it were in the wild world of ages ago, that
when I let myself come back suddenly to the
twentieth century, and stare at the park and the
people, the change was tremendous. All around
me were the well-dressed descendants of primi¬
tive animals, whizzing about in bright motors,
past tall, soaring buildings. What gifted, ener¬
getic achievers they suddenly seemed!

I thought of a photograph I had once seen, of
a ship being torpedoed. There it was, the huge,
finely made structure, awash in the sea, with tiny
black spots hanging on to its side—crew and pas-

“93“

This Simian World

sengers. The great ship, even while sinking, was
so mighty, and those atoms so helpless. Vet,
it was those tiny beings that had created that
ship. They had planned it and built it and
guided its bulk through the waves. They had also
invented a torpedo that could rend it asunder.

It is possible that our race may be an accident,
in a meaningless universe, living its brief life
uncared-for. on this dark, cooling star: but even
so—and all the more—what marvelous creatures
we are! What fairy story, what tale from the
Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part
as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians!
It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales
we invent. A universe capable of giving birth to
many such accidents is—blind or not—a good
world to live in, a promising universe.

And if there are no other such accidents, if we
stand alone, if all the uncountable armies of
planets are empty, or peopled by animals only,
with no keys to thought, then we have done
something so mighty, what may it not lead to!
What powers may we not develop before the Sun

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This Simian World

dies! We once thought we lived on God’s foot¬
stool: it may be a throne.

This is no world for pessimists. An amoeba
on the beach, blind and helpless, a mere bit of
pulp.—that amoeba has grandsons today who
read Kant and play symphonies. Will those
grandsons in turn have descendants who will sail
through the void, discover the foci of forces, the
means to control them, and learn how to mar¬
shal the planets and grapple with space? Would
it after all be any more startling than our rise
from the slime?

No sensible amoeba would have ever believed
for a minute that any of his most remote chil¬
dren would build and run dynamos. Few sensi¬
ble men of today stop to feel, in their hearts, that
we live in the very same world where that mir¬
acle happened.

This world, and our racial adventure, are
magical still.

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TWENT T

Yet although for high-spirited marchers the
march is sufficient, there still is that other way of
looking at it that we dare not forget. Our adven¬
ture may satisfy us: does it satisfy Nature? She is
letting us camp for awhile here among the
wrecked graveyards of mightier dynasties, not
one of which met her tests. Their bones are the
message the epochs she murdered have left us:
we have learned to decipher their sickening
warning at last.

Yes, and even if we are permitted to have a
long reign, and are not laid away with the fail¬
ures, are we a success?

We need so much spiritual insight, and we
have so little. Our airships may some day float
over the hills of Arcturus. but how will that help
us if we cannot find the soul of the world? Is that

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This Simian World

soul alive and loving? or cruel? or callous? or
dead?

We have no sure vision. Hopes, guesses, be¬
liefs—that is all.

There are sounds we are deaf to, there are
strange sights invisible to us. There are whole
realms of splendor, it may be, of which we are
heedless; and which we are as blind to as ants to
the call of the sea.

Life is enormously flexible—look at all that
we’ve done to our dogs,—but we carry our hairy
past with us wherever we go. The wise St. Ber¬
nards and the selfish toy lap-dogs are brothers,
and some things are possible for them and others
are not. So with us. There are definite limits to
simian civilizations, due in part to some primi¬
tive traits that help keep us alive, and in part to
the mere fact that every being has to be some¬
thing, and when one is a simian one is not also
everything else. Our main-springs are fixed, and
our principal traits are deep-rooted. We cannot
now re-live the ages whose imprint we bear.

We have but to look back on our past to have

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This Simian World

hope in our future: but—it will be only our fu¬
ture, not some other race’s. We shall win our
own triumphs, yet know that they would have
been different, had we cared above all for crea-
tiveness, beauty, or love.

So we run about, busy and active, marooned
on this star, always violently struggling, yet with
no clearly seen goal before us. Men, animals, in¬
sects—what tribe of us asks any object, except to
keep trying to satisfy its o^vn master appetite? If
the ants were earth s lords they would make no
more use of their lordship than to learn and en¬
joy every possible method of toiling. Cats would
spend their span of life, say, trying new kinds of
guile. And we, who crave so much to know, crave
so little but knowing. Some of us wish to know
Nature most; those are the scientists. Others, the
saints and philosophers, wish to know God. Both
are alike in their hearts, yes, in spite of their
quarrels. Both seek to assuage, to no end, the old
simian thirst.

If we wanted to be Gods—but ah, can we grasp
that ambition?

A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH
THIS BOOK IS SET

The text of this book was set on the linotype in Baskerville.
The punches for this face were cut under the supervision of
George W. Jones, an eminent English printer. Linotype Bas¬
kerville is a facsimile cutting from type cast from the original
matrices of a face designed by John Baskennlle. The original
face was the forerunner of the “modern” group of type faces.

John Baskerville (1706-75), of Birmingham, England, a writ¬
ing-master, with a special renown for cutting inscriptions in
stone, began experimenting about 1750 with punch-cutting and
making typographical material. It was not until 1757 that he
published his first work, a Virgil in royal quarto, with great-
primer letters. This was followed by his famous editions of
Milton, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and several
Latin classic authors. His types, at first criticized as unneces¬
sarily slender, delicate, and feminine, in time were recognized
as both distinct and elegant, and both his types and his
printing were greatly admired. Printers, however, preferred
the stronger types of Caslon, and Baskerville before his
death repented of having attempted the business of
printing. For four years after his death his widow con¬
tinued to conduct his business. She then sold all
his punches and matrices to the Society Litteraire-
typographique, which used some of the types
for the sumptuous Kehl edition of Vol-
— taire’s works in seventy volumes .—

COMPOSED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY
H. WOLFF, NEW YORK. PAPER MADE
BY P. F. GLATFELTER Sc CO.,

SPRING GROVE, PA.

*NI